


Six Months

by phantisma



Series: Broken [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-09
Updated: 2007-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantisma/pseuds/phantisma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three days someone has been calling and hanging up on the answering machine.  When Jessica finally answers one of the calls, John is on the line, asking for Sam to meet him.  Before he even gets there, Sam knows something is seriously wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Months

“There are 4 more hang ups on the machine, all from the same number.” Jess said as Sam emerged from the bathroom, riding out on a plume of steam, wrapped in her pink towel. When he didn’t answer, she sighed. “Are you going to tell me who it is at least?”

He smiled, moving close so he could put his hands on her hips and pull her to him. “If they’re hang ups, how am I supposed to know who it is?” He kissed her lightly and she giggled.

“You’re being coy. Trying to distract me.”

“Me?” Sam shook his head. “Nope. Just thinking about throwing you down on the bed and ravishing you.”

She rolled her eyes and pulled away. “I have a class in fifteen minutes. You have one in forty five…and it’ll take you that long to get dressed.”

He scowled at her. “Will not.”

“Sam.” She looked at him like he was crazy. “When it comes to deciding what to wear, you’re worse than me. You’re such a girl.”

Sam shook his head, reminded again why he liked her so much. She reminded him of Dean. He turned toward the closet to hide the sudden emotion that came with the thought, but she was already moving out of the bedroom. “I made cookies. Don’t eat them all!”

The phone rang, but Sam ignored it, rummaging in the closet for something to wear. He never used to be like this, but Jessica kept buying him clothes and it made getting dressed more complicated. He pulled on a pair of jeans, turning as he heard her voice from the doorway.

She was frowning, holding the phone out to him. “Sam? It’s your father.”

Sam swallowed hard, looking at the phone as if it had claws. “It’s who?”

“He said he was your father. I thought you said—“

Sam shook his head, his whole body following suit as icy dread leeched into his veins. His father. The one who told him not to come back. The one who turned his back. “It can’t be my father.”

“Samuel Winchester, get your ass on this phone.”

Sam laughed nervously. “Okay…maybe it can be.” He brushed his hands down the legs of his jeans as he crossed the room. He took the phone, and brushed a kiss over her cheek. “Go to class. We’ll talk about it tonight.”

He waited until he heard the front door close, then licked his lips and lifted the phone to his ear. “Dad.”

“I’ve been calling you for days.”

“Yeah, hello to you too.” Sam said dryly. “What do you want?”

“Need to see you.”

“I don’t think so.” Sam rubbed a hand over his mouth. Three years he’d been gone. Three years without so much as a phone call or postcard, until three days ago when the hang up calls had started.

“Don’t want to fight, Son. Just…need to see you.”

“Why? Why now?” Sam’s stomach churned as he realized the only thing that would drive his father to call. “It’s Dean. What’s wrong with Dean?”

“Sam—“

“No. You tell me. Tell me right this minute.”

“No. Not on the phone. Meet me.”

Sam might have argued, might have ignored him, told him off. But it was Dean. Dean. He blew out slowly. “Where are you?”

“Diner, just off campus. Leeza’s or some shit.”

“I know it. Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Sam hung up the phone and dropped it on the bed before running shaking hands over his face. He’d abandoned Dean…left him…hurt him…ran away. He’d wanted them to…he sighed and reached for the closest shirt in the closet, shrugging into it. Truth was, things with Dean had been too complicated…and he’d just run away from it.

 

Sam’s long legs ate the distance to the diner. He spotted the truck and stopped, taking deep breaths to ease the swirling in his stomach. His last months with them had been filled with fighting, mostly with his father.

Their last words had been angry, screamed…hurled over a parking lot as Sam stalked away.

He pulled himself together and let himself into the diner. His father was at a booth in the back where he could watch the door. He looked…like hell. At least three days growth covered his face and even from a distance Sam could tell he hadn’t slept in at least as long.

As he got closer, his heart thundered in his chest. Whatever was wrong was really wrong. His father’s eyes were rimmed in red, sunk deep in black pits that almost looked bruised. Anger washed away under absolute terror. “Dad?”

He tried to smile. Tried and failed and grunted instead, pointing to the bench opposite him. “What’s going on? Where’s Dean?”

“Sit.” His voice was gruff, like he’d swallowed glass with his coffee.

Sam sank slowly to the seat, his fear eating it’s way up the back of his throat. He half expected him to say Dean was dead. “Dad. Where is Dean?”

John Winchester cleared his throat and took a long drink from his coffee cup. “Dean’s…missing. I can’t find him.”

“Missing?” Sam sat back in the booth, stretching his long legs under the table. “What does that mean? Missing how?”

He didn’t look up at Sam, his voice sunk deep in his chest, each word slow and painful, like he was drawing knives out of his stomach. “He’s…just gone, Sam. Gone. Missing. I’ve searched. I’ve waited. I’ve hunted. He’s…gone.”

Gone. Missing. Words Sam couldn’t wrap around the image of his brother. Dean was the one who took care of the rest of them. Made sure Sam had dinner, cleaned Dad’s wounds…Dean was always there. Dean couldn’t be gone. It was inconceivable.

“How long?” Sam asked. When John didn’t answer immediately, Sam cleared his throat and asked again. “How long has he been gone, Dad?”

That was when Sam knew this was far more wrong than Dean had gone on a bender and Dad had lost track of him. His father didn’t answer him. He stood, dropped a few dollars on the table and muttered, “Outside.”

“What do you mean, outside? Answer me.” Sam stood, following because he didn’t have any choice, following his father out to the truck. Once clear of the doors, Sam reached for him, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around. “Answer me. How long?”

John bristled, then sagged, as if all the fight had been pulled out of him and all that was left was a sack of skin held up by little more than weary bones. “Six months.”

“Six…six…” Sam gasped for air. That couldn’t be right. “You…you’re just getting around to telling me now? Now?” Sam shoved him, pushed him into the grill of the truck. His father slumped, his knees bending as if they couldn’t hold him up any more. “What the fucking hell is this? Six months? Six months and you couldn’t pick up a fucking phone?”

“Sam—“

“No. No. Dad.” Sam’s stomach burned, his hands shook. “What kinda shit were you into? What did you get him into?”

John shook his head, inhaling and visibly pulling himself together. “That’s it, Sam. We were taking some down time. We’d had a couple of tough hunts. We were tired, we were fighting. Got us a room. Dean went out to…drink, hustle…fuck…whatever it is your brother does when he storms out.”

Sam felt a stab through his gut. He had no right to be jealous. Not when he had Jessica. Not when his brother was missing. “And?”

“He never came back.” John pulled his hands through his hair. “I—I thought he was off working through his…attitude. I waited a few days, but there was a hunt. I left word at the hotel, and went to take care of the ghost.”

“Six months? Took you six months to put down a single ghost?” Sam couldn’t decide which emotion to follow, the anger burning up inside him, the fear twisting him, the jealousy at the thought that Dean had gone back to his fucking around.

“No. I went back. The car was still there. No one had seen him. I called his cell, left a message. Told him I’d have Bobby come get the car, and he could find his way to Bobby’s when he was ready.”

“The car. He left the Impala behind?” Sam asked incredulously, turning to face his father fully. “He left the car and you didn’t know something wasn’t right?”

John made a face that Sam couldn’t read. “He was angry when he left. Really angry.”

Sam’s hand fisted of its own accord and swung through the air before he could stop it. He hit his father’s jaw. Hard. John’s head snapped to the side. “You…goddamn, arrogant, son of a bitch.”

John blocked the second punch, but to his surprise, didn’t hit back. “I know, Sam. I know.”

Sam licked his lips and paced away, all the way to the end of the sidewalk in front of the diner, then back. “Okay. So….”

John looked at him blankly for a minute, then nodded. “I tried. I canvassed the bar, talked to the manager, the bartender, the locals…truckers that came through. I called his cell.”

“There’s something you aren’t saying.” Sam knew the look on his face, knew that he was holding something back.

“I—figured he was just avoiding me. I told him…we fought…and I told him to go. I told him he should just leave. Like you did.”

Sam’s hand fisted up again and he turned away to keep from taking another swing. “Fuck.” Six months. Six months. He knew the statistics. Six months meant Dean was probably dead.

No.

Sam shook his head. His face was numb. His breathing was uneven, uneasy…his lungs tight and stinging. Dean. His Dean.

“Fuck.” Sam pushed the panic down. Breathed slow and deep and ignored the voice in the back of his head whispering “Dean is dead. Dean is dead,” on endless repeat. “Okay. You said you looked. Where? How long ago? What do you know for sure?”

John shook his head and pulled himself upright. He unlocked the passenger side of his truck and pulled out a file folder. It was very thin. “The town’s called Cassidy. Not much there. Two motels, three bars, five churches and a grocery store. Maybe 200 houses. Kind of rugged terrain. Trees, a few hills, rocks.” He handed the file over. “I’ve been over every inch of it. There’s no sign of him. Anywhere.”

“You must have missed something.” Sam said, his voice a low growl as he opened the file. His mind was filled with images of his brother laying at the bottom of a ravine somewhere, waiting for his father to come for him…waiting and dying. “You must have overlooked something.”

He was grasping. He knew it. His father knew it.

“He was alive when he left the bar, Sam.” It was small, quiet…there was an edge of desperation on his father’s voice. Something Sam had never heard before. “I know he was.”

Those words hung on the air between them. It wasn’t an admission…it wasn’t hope…it was…the lost words of a father who had lost his son.

“What else?” Sam asked after the silence had gotten stiff and awkward. “Six months, Dad. There’s gotta be something else.”

John shook his head. “There…I heard about a young hunter…matched Dean’s description. Chased him all the fuck over the south. Lost a month and a half, convinced it was Dean.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. Just some reckless kid who lost his brother.” John sighed and sagged against the side of the truck. “I—I just didn’t know what else to do Sam.”

Sam nodded, still staring at the file in his hands. “I’m going to need a list of every job you did for six months before…every town, every road. Anytime you separated. I gotta go back…to the apartment…get some stuff. Tell Jess…fuck I don’t know what I’ll tell Jess. I’ll be back here in an hour.”

“Sam, let me—“

Sam stopped half way down the building and turned. “No. Just…make the list. Give me someplace to start. This—“ He gestured over his shoulder at the campus. “You don’t get to be here. This is mine.”

Sam turned and jogged away. Didn’t look back. Didn’t think. The further from his father he got, the faster he ran. He was sweating and panting when he got to the apartment. The next half hour was a whirl. He threw clothes into a duffle, paying little attention to what was there…just stuffing things in.

He took a little more care with weapons, pulling them from hiding places…a gun from a shoebox in the back of the closet. A hunting knife that Dean had given him when he was sixteen from where it was taped to the back of the dresser. Leather gloves…a hat…he was going to have to steal a car…get to Bobby’s.

Dean would never forgive him if he left the impala languishing at Bobby’s place. He’d want to see her when Sam found him. Sam swallowed and pushed away the thought of Dean dead across the Impala’s back seat. He would know if Dean was dead.

He would know.

He couldn’t acknowledge the creeping fear…haunting…hanging just off his shoulder. He wouldn’t face it. He would find Dean. Find him and then kick his ass for scaring him. He dropped his duffle by the front door with his backpack.

“Jessica.” He breathed her name as he stood in the kitchen, looking at the plate of cookies. There was a note on them in her hand writing. He picked it up and turned it over, grabbing at the pen she’d left on the table.

“Jess…family emergency. I’ll be back in a few days. Explain it all then. Love, Sam.”

 

His father never seemed so small.

He was sitting on the tailgate of the truck as Sam made his way back to the diner. He looked up when Sam’s shoe scuffed on the pavement. His cheeks were wet, his eyes shot through with red.

Sam adjusted his duffle over his shoulder, looked away. He wasn’t ready to feel sorry for him. Wasn’t ready for tears. He needed the anger. Needed it to fuel him past the numbing fear.

John stood, holding out a piece of paper. Sam looked at it, his hand rising to it slowly. There were no more words. His left hand closed on the paper, his right fisted tight and swung out, connecting with his father’s face and sending him sprawling to the ground on his ass.

Sam stalked away. He was going to need a car.


End file.
